Does anyone have any hard numbers on overall museum trends in numbers of online visitors versus footfall in the bricks & mortar museums? My anecdotal sense from talking to various museum professionals is that online traffic is 3-10 times the in-person visitorship, but I'd like to be able to cite an actual study.
It would also be great to know what percentage of museums' online traffic is to content that is not resident on their websites, e.g. Podcasts on iTunes/iTunes U, and videos on YouTube, if anyone has those stats for your own museum or others'.... ...And the next step is to show what great return on investment our digital initiatives provide, since we reach many more people online than in person, and buildings are relatively expensive to maintain. This is not to challenge the primacy and importance of the real world buildings and collections, but simply to underscore how much reach digital teams can achieve for comparatively little money. Many thanks! Nancy Nancy Proctor Head of New Media Initiatives Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) MRC 970 PO Box 37012 Washington DC 20013-7012 USA o: +1-202-633-8439 f: +1-202-633-8455 c: +1-301-642-6257 proctorn at si.edu http://www.americanart.si.edu http://eyelevel.si.edu/
